A Wilderness of Warding
by Permilea
Summary: After Mount Doom, an exhausted Sam does his best to tend and protect an injured Frodo despite a bewildering change in their circumstances. AU, nonslash.
1. Chapter 1

**A Wilderness of Warding**

Author: Permilea  
Rating: PG  
Characters: Frodo, Samwise  
Category: AU  
Status: Incomplete, and that's how it will stay. If you keep reading, you mustn't complain when you reach the last bit.  
Disclaimer: Middle-earth and its denizens belong to the Tolkien Estate.  
Summary: After Mount Doom, an exhausted Sam does his best to tend and protect an injured Frodo despite a bewildering change in their circumstances. AU, non-slash.

_A/N: This story is pure self-indulgence. Riding a ski lift during a snowfall one day, I looked down at the snow-cloaked firs and pines and imagined exhausted Sam looking after injured Frodo in such a mountain forest. That's it. It's AU. It's hurt/comfort (mostly comfort.) It's space/time travel. Why am I posting it? Because I had fun writing it and maybe you'll have fun reading it. For those who share my love of h/c (emphasis on the 'c') and can't get enough even when the story isn't canon or complete: Here's to you! _

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**A Wilderness of Warding**

**Chapter 1**

"Frodo? _Frodo!"_

Sam Gamgee braced himself against the biting wind and squinted through the whirling darkness. They'd been together just moments earlier, watching the lava creep closer, struggling to breathe the poisonous hot air. Frodo had slumped against him, his hand going limp in Sam's, and Sam had felt his own legs collapse, seen darkness cover his vision and heard silence slowly fill his ears.

But now he was in a world of freezing night. One moment blasted by heat and fire in a desert, the next gasping in a blizzard in a forest. His throat, burning from the sulfurous acid air of Mordor, now choked closed against a chunk of frigid air.

Bewildered by the sudden change, Sam put thought of it aside when he realized the hand that had clasped his own so desperately was missing. A sudden gust felled him to his knees and he floundered in snow over waist-high.

"Frodo!"

The wind ripped his words from his mouth and whipped them to nothingness in its howling. He lurched forward, arms flailing through the nearby drifts, searching. His eyes watered as he tried to see through the wind-driven snow, sharp as needles. Tall shadows shivered in the night before him and he lurched into the frost-scoured sides of trees and boulders in the sloping ground. Only when he barked against their rough solid shapes did he know they were not his master.

Then beneath a snow stream writhing like a snake, something dappled the drifted surface. He touched it with one shaking hand. Blood. Fresh blood. And the nearby snow was disturbed, as if something – _someone—_had lain there just moments before.

"Mr. Frodo!" Sam shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Frodo!" He looked around wildly, but the darkness and the blizzard defeated him. Frantic he plowed his way downhill, where something had crawled or rolled before him. Frozen droplets made dark smears in the broken snow. He stumbled and fell over something soft and still. Sam fought the snow, to reach his master's side.

"Sam—" The whisper was faint, but Sam had heard that voice through an erupting volcano. He had no trouble hearing it now through a howling blizzard. He felt Frodo shudder and heard him cough. He was on his front, face half out of the snow, one hand buried beneath him, the other curled above his head. He was struggling to rise, his free hand scrabbling at the snow, when Sam caught him around the shoulders, grabbed the twitching fingers and stilled them.

"Master, don't. You can't—"

"_Must."_ The single word was gasped. Frodo's pain-glazed eyes held Sam's, but then they clouded over from cold and shock and exhaustion. With a shudder, he collapsed. His hand went limp in Sam's and his eyes closed.

"No!" Sam grabbed him, shook him, his eyes filling with fearful tears. He looked around frantically, desperately peering through the darkness and the snowstorm. There! A shadow, not far off, wide and tall, promising shelter of a sort if he could reach it. But it would take all his strength to break through the drifts. He had to leave Frodo behind.

Gently Sam laid his friend down and tugged the hood of the elf cloak over his face to protect him from the driving snow. He pulled out the elf-rope, tied it around Frodo's unwounded hand, and, with the other end around his own, he began to push and fight his way toward the tall shadow.

It was just a few short feet before he found it, a tree, huge beyond any outside Lothlórien. He stopped, panting, the icy air like needles in his chest, the flakes of snow stinging in his eyes. There had been no such tree on the slopes of Mount Doom. He wouldn't think of that now. There hadn't been snow either. He squinted back along the silvery trail of the rope. It vanished into the dense snowstorm--the other end, and the person tied to it, hidden by the swirling darkness.

Sam gulped, panic shooting through him. It left him gasping, but he fought it off, and turned toward the tree. Inexplicable or not, it was a giant, a great swooping spruce, whose lower branches were deeply buried in drifts. Grimly, Sam began digging, his numb hands flinging snow away in frustratingly small chunks. Sam dug faster. Frodo would not survive long exposed as he was now, and neither would he, for that matter. Whether they could survive for long even protected from this blizzard, without fire nor food, Sam thrust from his mind.

His hands left red streaks on the snow, but Sam forced himself to keep tunneling, pushing aside the great flat swathes of evergreen that the fierce wind whipped back against him. His hand broke through to nothingness. He pushed through to widen the hole, then he tied the rope to a branch with stiff fingers, and groped his way back along it to fetch Frodo.

There wasn't much room under the spruce, giant though it was, but there was enough for two small hobbits to lie between roots and trunk on a thick mat of fallen needles. The dense foliage of the lower branches held back the snow and the wind, and formed a slanting ceiling. To smial-dwelling hobbits, its closeness was cozy and comforting. Sam spread the elven-cloak over them both as much as he could and curled himself and Frodo up together, trying to still his master's fierce shivers with his own body warmth, such as it was.

"Don't know what good it'll do," he muttered, his teeth chattering and hands shaking as he clutched the unconscious hobbit close to him under the cloak's thin gray weave. "But it comes from the Lady, and she gave it to us in her Woods. Won't do no harm I reckon."

And when he stopped shivering and his eyes closed, Sam didn't struggle. He smiled, held Frodo's icy hands in his, and let himself sink into sleep.

_So long as we're together, Mr. Frodo, _he thought drowsily. _Funny. Didn't think it would be so warm, somehow._

-TBC-


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I said I wanted Sam taking care of injured Frodo. I said this story was shameful self-indulgence. This chapter proves it. Be prepared for a chapter full of what in a different fandom is called "WAFF" – warm and fuzzy feelings._

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A Wilderness of Warding 

**Chapter 2**

"_Samwise Gamgee!"_

Sam jolted awake. He squinted, wondering why there was a tree branch jabbing into his shoulder, and why it was so bright and cold, and had someone called his name? He shook his head, closed his eyes and would have rubbed them, but his hands were stuck underneath something still and heavy and…breathing.

"Frodo!" Sam forgot all about the voice that had wakened him, and bent over Frodo. He was alive, but that was just about all that could be said about him.

"And that's more'n I thought we'd be," Sam whispered. Wonderingly, he fingered the elven cloak spread so thinly over them both. _Elven magic_, he thought. _Had to be._ He was colder than he'd ever been in his life, even on Caradhras, but he was alive.

Sam looked worriedly at his unconscious master. Magic cloaks or no, they wouldn't be alive for long in this cold. And Frodo needed more than warmth. Sam pulled out Frodo's wounded hand, and gently curled his own stiff fingers over the bloodied gap. He had nothing with which to tend it. Their orc garb was hide and hair and metal. The elven cloak would not tear, and besides they needed it whole. Sam's shirt and breeches were filthy from Mordor and would be worse than nothing. At least the finger, what was left of it, had stopped bleeding. Still, Frodo was in a bad way. He needed food and water and tending. They both did.

"And where I'm going to find it on a mountainside in the middle of winter is more than I can tell," Sam said in despair. "Might as well still be in Mordor."

A weak laugh turned quickly to a cough, and Frodo convulsed in Sam's arms. Sam lifted him quickly, and supported him while he gasped for breath.

"Dear Sam," he whispered, his voice slurred and rough. "Does it matter?" He opened his eyes, and looked up at his friend. A faint smile split his soot-covered face. Sam smiled back.

"Mornin', sir. At least, I think it's morning. A bright day, by the look of those sunbeams through those branches up there. It's been long since we've had light. Light, and…and water, sir!"

While Frodo watched, Sam reached up to the roof of branches just inches above them. He scrabbled a little, and a fine spray of snow drifted down on them. Sam brought a handful to Frodo's parched lips and rubbed gently. Frodo hesitantly licked his lips of the droplets of water that formed.

Sam fed Frodo snowmelt, but stopped when his master started shivering again. Frodo needed water, but he'd freeze sooner than he'd die of thirst if he kept getting it this way.

But that brought them to the point. What to do now? Sam put the question to his master. Frodo looked up at him fondly.

"What is to be done, Sam? You must make such choices as you can without me. Yes," he insisted when Sam shook his head. "You must. I have no strength left… none to leave this place. But you can go."

Sam still shook his head. He put his fingers over Frodo's lips when Frodo tried to continue, and met Frodo's blue gaze with his steady brown one.

"I left you once, sir, against my heart. I shan't leave you again."

Frodo was silent. Then tears began to slide down the sides of his face.

"No, sir, don't. Please!" Horrified, Sam wiped the tears away, but Frodo regarded him steadily, unashamed.

After a moment, he whispered, "If you will not leave me to save yourself… than I must go with you. But it is beyond me. Your staying because of that… is more than I can bear."

"Frodo," Sam said very softly. "There ain't no place to go, anyhow. So don't fret, me dear." He laid a gentle kiss in Frodo's hair, and then nestled them up tighter underneath the elven cloak. "And speaking of the other thing, we'll go together or not at all. Seeing as how we could have done that just as well where we were, I think it's not at all, if you follow me."

There was a choked sound beneath him. Startled, Sam loosened his grip and pushed Frodo away just enough to see that he was laughing. Feebly, faintly, tears still trickling down his cheeks, but laughing. Sam stared. For a moment, color returned to his friend's worn face.

"Oh, Sam. Well, since we are here… and not there… you must be right. Since you are right… why don't you take a look outside… and see where we are. But first," he tangled weak fingers in Sam's shirt to stop him from rising, "take care of yourself. That wound looks dreadful." He gestured toward Sam's forehead.

Sam started. With all that had happened and in his worry over his master, he'd forgotten about Gollum's attack. Now he could feel the stiffness of dried blood down the side of his face, and a considerable throbbing behind his temple. He touched the wound gingerly and grimaced.

"Does it hurt?" asked Frodo, watching Sam dab at it with a handful of snow. "It's quite bruised and angry."

Automatically, Sam shook his head, then stopped as a wave of dizziness suddenly swept over him. The first thing he saw when the darkness passed was Frodo's worried face. He smiled at him reassuringly. "Naught to worry about. I reckon I look a sight, but that's all."

Frodo wasn't convinced. "Sam, you've gone quite pale--" But Sam loosened Frodo's grip on his shirt and laid him down on the dense bed of fallen needles, tucking the elven cloak firmly around him. When Frodo protested, Sam favored him with a no-nonsense-from-you look.

"Lay you quiet there, while I take a peek." He knelt, then looked back over his shoulder. "Best close your eyes 'til I'm through."

Frodo obeyed, and Sam started pushing aside the snow-laden branches that formed their shelter's roof. Snow showered on them both. With one great shove, he pushed his head and shoulders through. The bright daylight struck him like a blow. He cried out, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes. The throbbing in his head increased viciously and he swallowed down sudden nausea.

"Sam? Sam! What is it?"

"Nothing, sir, nothing," he answered, squeezing his eyelids to slits and wiping away the tears. "Just bright out here, that's all. It'll pass." He could feel the worry in the silence behind him. After a few minutes, he managed to keep his eyes open. With one hand blocking part of the glare, he got a good look at the world into which they had inexplicably arrived.

-TBC-


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: The second to last section, it also contains the start of a plot. Sort of._

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**A Wilderness of Warding**

Chapter 3

They were on a mountainside. Evergreens surrounded them, cutting off his view except for one swath downhill and to his right. There he could see to the horizon through the bare branches of a copse of slender white trees. Sam gasped. He had never seen so much of the world before. It was spread before him in a vast tumbled wilderness beneath a dazzling blue sky. He could not even see the whole of the mountain they were on, for a great ridge rose beyond the white trees. He squinted. Something sparkled at him. He thought it was a river or a lake far away. He thought he could hear water, too, quite near, a stream perhaps, hidden by the evergreens or in the valley before the ridge.

Sam took in all this open-mouthed. For a long minute he wondered if he had lost his wits. He'd known something incredible had happened, but this! It was as if the world had remade itself, like in the old tales. Had the wise ones…? Had Elrond and the Lady and… and Gandalf, _known_ this would happen when the Ring went into the fire?

"Horsefeathers!" he snorted. "Someone's playin' tricks on you, Samwise Gamgee. Or more'n likely this bump on your head has you seein' things." He looked around doubtfully, then set his jaw. It looked mighty real and it felt mighty real, but making it go back to normal was no concern of his. His concern was Mr. Frodo, and what needed doing. And that was the same no matter where they were.

First things first. The snow might be as high as a garden gate, but there was no wind and the sun was good and strong, the warmth welcome on his face. That would be one thing taken care of. Get Mr. Frodo out here, get him soaking up the sunshine like a cat on a flagstone path and then they'd see. Or would it be better to find food first? Sam gnawed at his lower lip, uncertain. His own strength was failing, he could feel it. Even this slight exertion had left him lightheaded and shaking. Whatever he did, he must do quickly.

Wherever they were at least it was not a steaming, poisonous desert barren of hope for food or drink. Even in winter, this land could sustain life. That was a coney-track over there or he was a ninnyhammer. And there was that water he kept hearing. Funny, that. It couldn't be, what with it so cold and all, but it sounded like water, right enough. If it were a warm-water spring, there might be fish, or he could dig for roots in the soft riverbank. He could hear birdsong, too, not that there'd be eggs this time of year. Sounded like a thrush. Yes, there it was, hopping about high in one of the white trees.

"Can't eat no thrush," Sam grumbled and rubbed at his forehead. The ache was getting worse. Eyes stinging, he peered at the bird, which stopped hopping and regarded him with one bright black eye. "Pigeon or dove now, they'd be a treat." He sighed, mourning anew his discarded pots and pans. Well, nothing for it. Come to worse, they would eat what he found raw. Lord knew they were hungry enough.

A strident sound in the distance brought Sam's head up. With an unnatural screech, the thrush flew off, but Sam hardly noticed. Dogs? Great brutes, from the sound of their deep throaty barks. Yet how could there be dogs out here? Sam went cold. Not dogs, no. They must be _wolves_, a large pack too, far too many for any hope of fighting them off, especially with Frodo as he was…

But _that_ was no wolf bark. Sam gasped, eyes wide and fearful. That was a _voice_. The words came sharp to his ears, gruff, shouting strange words with the bite of command. Someone was _with_ those wolves. Suddenly Sam remembered old Mr. Bilbo telling tales of his adventures with Gandalf and the dwarves in the Misty Mountains; of them being trapped in trees by goblins and wolves banded together for evil purposes.

"Wish we had old Gandalf here now with some of them pinecones," Sam muttered, swiping his eyes with his sleeve. He was so _tired_. How could he keep them off, when his head kept swimming and his eyes were watering and his legs felt like two straws? But they were coming closer, all of them. He had to try. They couldn't climb, and there weren't no eagles to fly them to safety anyhow. He drew Sting and started to rise.

"No, Sam."

Frodo's command was so faint Sam barely heard it, but he did feel weak fingers wrap around his foot. He would have kicked free, but with a gasping sob, Frodo rolled himself onto Sam's legs, pinning them down. He lay heavy against him, wheezing, clutching him with frigid fingers; and Sam's heart failed him.

"Oh, Frodo," Sam breathed, forgetting himself in his fear for his friend. He pushed him down, or tried to. "Stay you down safe. I ain't letting you be captured by orcs again."

"Dear Sam," Frodo gasped, "I know you would defend me well… as you did before… but neither of us will be captured by orcs… if you act like a sensible hobbit… and _hide! _The tree hides our scent… and the snow covers our tracks. Time enough for fighting… if we must._"_

Sense indeed. Shaking his head in chagrin, Sam withdrew into their tree-shelter. "Your Sam's a noodlehead," he said, holding Sting between them. Frodo's eyes went to it, then met Sam's, puzzled. Sam grinned ruefully. "Sting ain't glowing. Whoever's out there, he ain't orc nor goblin. But I doubt a wolf-tamer's going to be too friendly, neither, so we'll just keep quiet-like." _And hope they think it's a rabbit or summat as poked through these branches, and so go on about their business._

They huddled together in the snow-filtered dimness, Sam supporting Frodo, both keeping still so as to hear and not be heard. The yelps approached, accompanied by soft swishing sounds, and then a crack as if from a whip. Frodo shuddered, and Sam tightened one arm around him. The other held Sting raised, ready to defend against the slightest movement across the sun-edged gap that led to the outside.

-TBC-


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: The last section. Some notes afterwards._

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**A Wilderness of Warding**

Chapter 4

A curious long whistle split the air, and the barking stopped, as did the soft sliding. Over creaks and growls and scuffles, they heard the same voice, lowered to normal talking tones, using a language unknown to Sam. Whoever it was, and by the timbre of the voice, the person was male, he was asking questions Sam wasn't about to answer. Neither was whoever he was talking to, by the sound of it.

"Can he be talking to the wolves, sir?" Sam whispered. Frodo's brows drew together, his eyes taking on a faraway look as he listened hard.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "It… it's not orc-speech. Even without the Ring..." He choked off. Sam felt him shivering.

"Frodo?"

Frodo tried to smile. "It's all right." He closed his eyes then, and to Sam's ears, his voice sounded tired. "The words seem familiar…but they don't make sense."

Then the voice stopped, and instead they heard something that froze their hearts. Something large was swishing its way on the snow, coming closer. Mouth dropping open, Sam stared at the entrance. _How _could they have been found? No tracks, no trace, no noise. They'd not been seen by any living creature, except…

Then the one living creature that had seen them darted through the snowy entrance. Frodo flinched. Instinctively, Sam folded himself over him, then held Sting high, peering up. The _thrush!_ Once again, Bilbo's tales of his old adventure careened through his mind. Talking ravens and westering suns and snails rapped on a mountainside while a dragon slept below. But… but here? And w_hy?_ Bilbo's thrush had been a _friend._

It fluttered around their heads, twittering brightly, then settled on a branch just beyond where Sam could reach it with Sting. Not that Sam tried. This sudden, unexpected betrayal was too much. Bleak despair flooded through him and before he could stop it, a sob escaped him. Mortified, he choked it off, but it was too late.

The approaching sounds stopped dead. There was a long silent moment. Frodo had gone limp against him, his breath faint and warm at Sam's throat. Sam knew he was unconscious, or near to it. Sam rested one cheek on top of Frodo's scorched, filthy curls and felt tears of frustration and weariness course down his face. He had no hand free to wipe them away. Anyway, Frodo would not see them now. Let the traitor bird see. Sam didn't care.

Over the despair filling his heart, Sam heard wings flutter again. Slowly, wearily, he tried to raise his head, tried to hold Sting ready, but his arm was heavy as stones. More chirps, then more unintelligible words, this time sharp and impatient. Sam didn't listen. Something pricked at his sleeve. He looked. The thrush sat there, unafraid, watching Sam with saucy black eyes.

"Leave us be!" Sam whispered, shaking his arm to dislodge it. "Ain't you done enough?" A huge shadow crossed over the hole to their shelter. Sam tightened his grip on Sting.

Before he had time to do more than that, a long pole was thrust through the spruce branches, splitting them apart in a shimmering shower of snow. A great gloved hand widened the gap. Suddenly the bird was in his face, chirping and fluttering like a mad creature. Ducking his head away from the mad bird, Sam swiped Sting blindly at the intruder. With triumph, he heard a hiss of pain and felt Sting slice flesh. The shadow shifted, seemed to retreat, but then it returned and to Sam's horror, it ripped Frodo out of his arms and away.

"_No!_"

Strength born of fear and desperation surged into Sam, and he burst out from underneath the tree. "You will not take him!" he shrieked at the figure carrying his beloved master away. At Sam's shout, the fur-trimmed hood turned to look over one shoulder.

It _was_ a Man, or the height and shape of a Man, for Sam could not see his face. Black wool masked his forehead, nose, mouth and chin, and great glass spectacles edged in frost covered his eyes. A bearskin coat with enormous pockets reached halfway down his legs. He stood atop the snow on narrow, flimsy-looking contraptions lashed to the soles of great black boots. Oddly enough, he bore no weapon.

But perhaps he didn't need one. For before Sam's gaze was caught by Frodo's boneless form in the stranger's great arms, he looked past them and saw what they were making for. Sam swayed, the world going black around him.

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_A/N: And… that's it. I warned you! I did try hard to think of ways to make this into a proper story. I have been stuck here, because I cannot decide just who this strange man is, or what he is up to. I had several ideas, all with radically different consequences for story development. My current favorite is that Sam and Frodo are in the future, are still on Mount Doom, and that he is a descendant of the orcs who remained in Mordor after its fall. Yes, I know Sting didn't shine – that would have been significant. But as long as I have not figured out who he is, or what he is doing here, or _why_ Sam and Frodo have been transported here (other than to let me write comfort scenes), or what they are to do in this world, I have not been able to write anything further.  
_

_Oh. Larner and Inkling guessed right, so I will confirm that what Sam saw was a dogsled. Pretty obvious. Since the typical dogs on such a sled are not dissimilar to wolves in appearance, I think a tired Sam could be forgiven for being afraid of them and of anyone who controls them._

_- Permilea _


End file.
